


Dance of Plenty

by ivyblossom



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Lost Memories, M/M, Missing Scene, Prince Caspian
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-07-30
Updated: 2010-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-10 21:07:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/104287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyblossom/pseuds/ivyblossom





	1. Turkish Delight

_One was a youth, dressed only in fawn-skin, with vine-leaves wreathed in his curly hair. His face would have been almost too pretty for a boy’s, if it had not looked so extremely wild. You felt, as Edmund said when he saw him a few days later, “There’s a chap who might do anything — absolutely anything.”  
_

_…where their hands touched, where their feet fell, the feast came into existence…_

_\--_ _Prince Caspian_

There were creatures everywhere. Not just animals of all varieties, cheering excitedly or daubing at their wounds from the recent battle, or barking or braying or neighing or roaring or growling a happy kind of purr deep in their chests. There were also naiads and dryads and creatures made half of water or tree or earth or sky, smelling of rosebuds or moss or wind and nearly transparent, their hands raised, their mouths open singing a happy, soothing song of pure pleasure.

Edmund turned his face away from the ceremony and looked into the crowd of familiar but unfamiliar creatures.  He remembered the names of their kind and the names of their ancestors, the ones he had met and laughed with and drank with and made love to, swirling in the confusing mix of memories in his brain. Sometimes they collided and formed into a coherent memory, but other times the names and faces passed through his mind and disappeared into the depths again.

It was as if the human memory was not designed for two lifetimes, as if it simply couldn’t cope with that many memories. While in Narnia, the Pevensies forgot what it was like to be children in England, and while in England, they forgot what strange and foreign treasures Narnia held. He looked at one willowy naiad and remembered a beautiful wood-woman he had fallen in love with, her long legs and greenish skin, the way she slipped into his bed in the evenings and left leaves on his pillows in the mornings. How when he had become enamoured with a dryad with long, luxuriously dark hair the naiad had gone into the woods and stood still until she became a willow tree, young and grey and sad. How could he have forgotten? His betrayals always seemed to rise to the surface first.

Edmund was very pleased that they had defeated Miraz’s army, he was pleased that Caspian was being crowned properly and that he would not be some kind of conquistador ruler over the beasts and birds. He was glad that Aslan was here to bless him and his reign, to justify him to the rest of his people and to the Narnians. But the crowd of wild folk distracted him from the official ceremony they had all gathered to see.

He looked out over their faces in the last rays of daylight: bright eyes twinkling, whiskers in full quiver, the graceful swaying of limbs. Their attention was focused on the great lion as he crowned Caspian King, then Caspian in turn knighted his loyal followers. All had turned toward Aslan except for one boy, whose intense eyes caught Edmund’s out of a crowd of watchers. He the wildest boy Edmund had ever seen. His sly stare was unashamed, unabashed.  He looked straight into Edmund’s soul, piercing through his eyes and trailing down into his heart. Edmund blushed as their eyes met; something flashed from his brain to his groin as he looked at the boy.  He felt suddenly weak.

The boy was beautiful, beautiful in a way that people never are.  Full, red lips, coloured by what must be the thickest and reddest of wines; tanned skin that looked both rugged and perfectly, invitingly soft, visible nearly in full because the boy wore only a rough animal skin wrapped haphazardly around his waist; hair so curly and glossy and thick it looked alive, vine-leaves woven through it as though they had sprung from his head. Edmund's eyes strayed down the boys chest and across his abdomen, lingering on his navel. There was a stain there, purplish red.  A drip of wine must have pooled on the boy’s stomach, lapped up (no doubt) by the hoard of girls that surrounded him. But he wasn’t looking at those girls, though even now in the midst of this ceremony their hands pawed at him, sliding under the animal skin at his waist and across his shoulders. His eyes never left Edmund. He blinked slowly, even his long eyelashes conveying a message: Y_es. It's me.. Do you remember now?_

Edmund’s heart leapt into his throat as he felt a stirring - something like a memory, a flash of an image. That boy, naked, lying on an ancient bed of moss between two large, gnarled roots, his eyes wide open and watching Edmund, the taste of salt-sweet skin and red wine under his tongue. Was it a memory, or a prophecy? Was it a memory, or desire? The boy stepped between the fawn and the centaur and the drove of rabbits who stood between them. Edmund’s heart raced. The boy smiled.

Have you ever looked into a shop window and seen, not just a wonderful thing, but the most wonderful thing in the world, something you didn’t even know you wanted so much until just then? That’s how Edmund felt looking at the boy, seeing him smile, his deep blue eyes looking at him serenely, the wildness in him that seemed on the edge of breaking free. Edmund thought of Turkish Delight.

When Edmund had returned to England after spending a lifetime in Narnia, he had mourned. They all had; Lucy spent two weeks crying through the night; Susan looked morose, even Peter was cranky and depressed. They were all uncomfortable with their parents and with adults in general, except perhaps Professor Kirke. Adults treated them like children, as though they hadn’t grown up already, waged wars, made love, protected the innocent, founded a new Kingdom. Adults talked to them as though they didn’t have their own thrones at Cair Paravel, with rooms full of gold and silver and a train of attendants waiting on their every word.

After a time, they grew used to it and began to forget. The memories faded and became like shared dreams, or a game of "Let’s Pretend" that had taken up an entire summer. Perhaps it was self-preservation, the gift of childhood returned to them. Perhaps it was a kind of mercy, to forget who they had been, so they could return to themselves. The days leading up to their stay in Narnia began to seem clearer than the ballrooms at Cair Paravel, willowy women he'd shared his bed with, hot summer afternoons in the apple orchards. Peter remembered that Edmund had borrowed a chess set two days before they discovered Narnia, and he asked for it back. Susan sometimes laughed about things Lucy did "when we were pretending to be Queens," and sometimes, months later, Edmund wasn't so sure it wasnt all a game after all.

But he'd never forgotten Turkish Delight.

There are some enchantments that never break, and Edmund’s desire for Turkish Delight was one of them. In his dreams he found himself in rooms of filled with it, as the White Witch had promised, and he wallowed in it. As guilty as he felt over what he had done for the love of Turkish Delight, the desire for it never entirely left him, though he never touched the stuff again, not even in England.  As he looked now at the boy, at his smooth chest moving slowly and rhythmically up and down, his strong shoulders and beautiful neck, his lusty grin and wild eyes, he wondered which he would rather have: Turkish Delight, or the chance to touch this boy.

The crowd was cheering for Caspian as the boy shifted closer, his breath sweet and hot on Edmund’s face. Saying nothing, he placed the palm of his hand on Edmund's neck and slid his fingers into Edmund's hair.

That was when the feast began to appear. As the boy stroked Edmund’s neck, lush, ripe fruit materialized at their feet. Apples, pears, apricots, peaches in baskets and cornucopias appeared around them.  But Edmund didn’t notice. He had the boy’s skin under his fingers, he could smell berries and rain in his hair. Peter and Susan and the others were moving eastward toward the courtyard; Edmund stayed where he was, the boy’s hands undoing the clasps on his tunic, his lips drifting along newly-exposed skin.

Edmund wondered for a moment what he was doing. It was true that sometimes at school the vengeful and bullying boys would make use of the younger ones, haul them over in the shower, thrust inside them under the water no matter if they wailed or fought back. The smarter ones didn't fight back, just bit their lips and waited for it to be over. It was generally the ones that fought back who, when they got older, did the same to the younger boys, half angry and half drooling in lust. Edmund had all avoided that so far, but he had sometimes climbed into the bed of his best friend Andrew when he was homesick, and they would curl up around each other and sleep. When Edmund cried, Andrew rubbed his back and snuffled into his hair, or wrapped his arms around Edmun'ds chest and pressed his lips against the back of Edmund's neck.

They weren't the only ones.  Most of the others did things like that too. It was comfort, that was all.  There was nothing strange about Andrew’s hands sometimes slipping under Edmunds waistband and stroking him there, too. And nothing strange Edmund doing the same for Andrew when he crawled into Edmund’s bed and had a cry. There was really very little difference between one sort of tear-filled gasp and another, when boys were homesick. And comfort of any kind was nice for a boy in a boarding school, after all.

But Edmund had been an adult once, too, and there were some things it had been easier to forget in England. Sounds, smells, textures, sinking into someone, relishing their body from the inside. That was not comfort or anger, it was joy and desire, and sometimes it was even love.

Something else came back to his memory, something that made this feel altogether familiar. This boy? This skin? These outrageous lips, tasting like the wine he must have just been drinking, a beautiful, red lower lip that fit perfectly between his own? Perhaps ... Why could he not remember? There were flashes of images: moss, gnarled roots, glossy black hair, deep blue eyes, a small smile, the curve of flesh under a sweet-smelling navel, the feeling of coarse hair against his lips. This smell: red wine, raspberries, mulberry leaves, lilacs. The more Edmund tried to remember, the farther the images fled from him. Soon he didn’t care anymore; if it wasn’t a real memory, it soon would be.

The boy pressed his body against Edmund’s and the smell of wine became overpowering. There was a cask of it leaning against his leg; it gurgled and filled itself with each light kiss the boy pressed against Edmund’s lips, cheeks, neck. He stopped and pulled away slightly, looking into Edmund’s face, his eyes unblinking.

"Watch me," he said softly, with a profoundly familiar and yet utterly foreign accent that Edmund couldn’t place. He leaned forward and kissed Edmund’s throat before he turned and walked away toward the girls.  They greeted him with kisses and hugs and stroked his back, his chest, his thighs.

And then he danced. It wasn’t a normal kind of dance, something ladies and their partners would do in England. It was a feral, elegant, rhythmic but completely unpredictable romp around the field, with the girls following behind, laughing. It was beautiful, but frightening in its madness, its ferocity.

Edmund had never considered whether people were _tame_ before, but it occurred to him then that he was indeed tame, and the boy dancing in front of him who was raised in the woods, without rule books and ethics and corporal punishment, was wild. The animal skin around his waist came free with the help of the girls (who, Edmund couldn't help noticing, seemed to take pains to touch him as much as possible, as often and in as many places as possible). Edmund licked his lips.

Everywhere the boys feet touched the ground, fruit, vegetables, sides of roasted meat, loaves of bread, cheeses, soups and cakes and biscuits of all kinds appeared; a great feast was called up from the earth. His kindred danced with him; the girls lifted the billowy, transparent material of their clothes off their bodies and held it over the boy’s head, a canopy of great honour. Edmund could hear the others behind him, Susan amazed at finding herself standing in a sea of peaches, Lucy talking excitedly about the strange things appearing around them - foods they’d never seen before, casks full of beer, desserts dotted with rose petals and sugar.

Others came to join the dancing boy: half-men, trees, animals, and wild, feral boys who could be his brothers, his lovers, his friends. Edmund began to remember, helped by hearing Lucy’s voice naming them one by one; Silenus on his donkey, the Maenads, the long train of girls, and the boy - Edmund realized with a start as he heard Lucy say his name - the boy was Bacchus. _Why of course! Who else would it be?_ Edmund felt flushed. _No wonder he tastes like wine._

Bacchus didn’t seem to forget Edmund, not for a moment. A distance away, within the crowd and under the makeshift canopy, his eyes never left Edmund; he would dance toward him and stroke his cheek, kiss his lips, slip a hand into Edmund’s trousers and take his earlobe between his teeth gently. With each touch more grapes, berries, and wine appeared, and there was a great roaring of pleasure from the animals around him.  He could hear Lucy and Susan giggling with Caspian. He wondered for a moment if they’d seen him with the wild boy, but didn’t care.

"Bacchus," Edmund whispered while the boy drew his tongue across Edmund's collarbone and a pitcher of cream appeared on the ground. Bacchus only looked at his face, smiled, and then lightly kissed his lips.  A large wooden bowl of the lightest wine appeared at their feet. Edmund's head spun, he felt drunk, and wondered if it was the wine on Bacchus’ lips or the feeling of being so close to him that made him feel so weak. He steadied himself as Bacchus winked at him and returned to his dance.

"Edmund!" It was Lucy, tugging on his sleeve. "Come sit with us, it’s a victory feast!" It was the last thing Edmund wanted to do - the very, absolute last thing. But he moved a short distance away from the dancing to sit with Peter and Lucy and Susan and Caspian and the others.  He was careful to sit facing the dancers. Not only because Bacchus had asked him to watch, but because he couldn't bear not to. 

Bacchus basked in the moonlight, his skin a pale bluish blur as he danced. Edmund ate ravenously as he watched, smiling at the others occasionally, nodding where required, but mostly ignoring them. It was too noisy for real conversation. He sat on the edge of the group, feeling the heat of the fire Peter had built against his skin.

Shortly thereafter, the dance of plenty ended, and Bacchus tied his animal skin around his waist again and came and sat by Edmund. The others seemed not to notice; they were too busy talking with Caspian and Aslan, eating and drinking and toasting the war heroes, laughing at the antics of the mice, the rabbits, the bears, the squirrels and other creatures who mimicked Bacchus’ dance, spilling nuts and flowers and honey from their paws.  Bacchus slid one hand against Edmund’s lower back.

Edmund leaned against Bacchus’ shoulder. "Why me?" he asked.

Bacchus grinned into Edmund's hair, kissed him lightly on the chin, and then brushed Edmund’s lips with his thumb. He smelled like berries and pears and earth. His stomach was warm and solid under Edmund’s fingers. "They said you wouldn’t remember, but I didn’t believe them. I still don’t. You remember, your body remembers. Just not your head."

"Remember what?"

"Shhhh…you’ll only forget again." It was dark by then, and even in the circle of light around the fire, only vague shapes and shadows could be seen. Bacchus nudged Edmund down onto the ground, leaned on top of him and nuzzled into his neck.

"I want to remember," Edmund said. Bacchus only kissed him and drew his fingers up under Edmund’s tunic.

At first Edmund didn't think it was about comfort, like his weepy petting with Andrew under the covers at night. He thought it was all play, all beauty and sensation, joy and victory and the pleasure of being touched, watched, enjoyed. But there was something in the way Bacchus touched him that told him otherwise. Something must have happened between them, something earth-shattering, something that changed their lives, something that should have lasted forever, and perhaps had. He closed his eyes and tried to remember. Moss, a gnarled old tree, Bacchus splayed out in front of him, deep blue eyes watching him. The taste of his skin, the smell of him, like strawberries, leaves, grass - like Turkish Delight. There was more, but he couldn’t remember it, how he'd felt there, caught in Bacchus’ gaze. He sighed.

If he couldn't have the memory, at least he had the present. Edmund kissed Bacchus gently, traced the muscles on his chest with his lips, ran his fingers through his glossy hair and displaced a leaf or two. Bacchus sighed and twined his legs with Edmund's. His heart beat fast under Edmund’s ear.

Much later, the fire was dying out and everyone had collapsed in sleep. They were all lying in a circle around the pit, their feet to the aging flames. Edmund fell asleep with his arms around Bacchus, his lips pressed against his neck. When he dreamed it was of the smell of that forbiddenTurkish Delight, a forest after midnight, a rendezvous, fingers in his hair, the taste of wine on his lips, the sound of laughing. Professions of love everlasting, promises. There was a great sadness in the dream, and he wanted to ask if he had broken his vows before he vanished out of the world, but he found his mouth glued shut, the scenes changing too rapidly. He felt dizzy, lonely ,and sad.

When he woke, morning had dawned and the boy was gone. Edmund remembered parts of his dreams, something about moss, trees, and thick, glossy hair.  He remembered a boy in his arms, he remembered kisses and forbiddenness. Could that be right? He blushed. Had anyone seen him? It seemed that they had not, or if they had, they were too polite to mention it. When he thought about it later, he couldn’t quite remember if he had actually met Bacchus, or if he had only watched him touch one of the maenad girls - perhaps a boy - one of his crazed, wild friends. Maybe they had exchanged a few words, he thought. Perhaps they had smiled at one another during his feral dance.

Some days afterward, as he stepped through the doorway back into his own world, he was sure he caught a glimpse of a beautiful boy, with leaves in his hair and nothing but an animal skin wrapped around his waist, standing just behind some trees, watching him. It felt meaningful somehow, but he couldn’t remember why.


	2. Tame

Bacchus was made of memories. He remembered everything; the way the sun shone down on the meadows hundreds of years ago, the peaking dawn of the beginning of time, the small details of Edmund's odd clothing, pattern of the lines on his palms. That fateful day, the day Bacchus didn't know would come, or could come, he didn't know Edmund had gone for good. Bacchus had been out romping through the woods, out so late the sky had started to turn pink at the edges. He had been dancing with the satyrs and naiads, drinking wine from stone cups and dancing until the valley grew sleepy and quiet. Before Edmund, he would curl up between the roots of some friendly tree when the dancing petered out, he would make a pillow of moss and sleep until the sun was high. After Edmund, he would return to the linden tree outside Edmund's window at Cair Paravel and make a bed there instead, slung between two branches and a spray of orange berries, hoping Edmund would crawl out onto the window ledge and curl up against him.

He told once Edmund that he could not be tamed, but it had turned out to be a lie. It was at a great feast years before, when Edmund was still young and feral, lawless. They would meet at revels and dance together; he the only human who could find them in the dark valleys of the Narnian forests. He had an ear for Bacchus' pipe, he could follow it from miles away. And Bacchus always welcomed him with wine and a garland of flowers. He was a man then, strong and fast, his dark hair unruly and falling over his eyes.

"I'm not a son of Adam," Bacchus had said as Edmund's wine-soaked tongue worked its way around his ear. There was a jealous edge to his grip, the way his eyes burned and his mouth twitched when the dryads reached for his furs and tugged them off his hips. "I'm not a man, I can't be tamed the way you can."

Edmund laughed. "I've heard that before," he said, "I know it's true. But I am a man, and I can't not want you." Bacchus was charmed. He was like a predatory mate who had fallen into the wrong den; a wolf that falls in love with a swan. But still Bacchus played his pipes a little too loud, cooled his heels on the dewy grass and waited until he could hear Edmund's footsteps in the distance. Bacchus led him like torchlight to their revels. He would strip Edmund naked and cover him with flowers, get him drunk with wine so rich and thick he wouldn't need to eat for days. They would dance together in darkness and in moonlight, and make love until dawn.

After a time Bacchus began following Edmund back to his castle by the sea. It was a beautiful place, but Bacchus could not be contained within stone for long. He would creep into Edmund's bed with him, taste him and caress him until Edmund collapsed into sleep, and then climb through the window into the branches of the linden tree outside. Sometimes he would doze off there, leaves curled around his toes.

He could not be tamed, he would not wake up bound in cotton sheets. He could not do as Edmund did and read reams of foreign paperwork, sit at a desk and solve political problems, entertain dignitaries and confer with giants and dwarves and other, stranger creatures. They didn't speak the same language during the day; it was as though they lived in different worlds.

Eventually they would live in different worlds, bridgeless; Edmund would return to that strange place he called _England._ The place where he had been a child.

"But you were a child here too," Bacchus would laugh, brushing Edmund's hair away from his eyes. He remembered Edmund's childhood, the way it slipped off his limbs like clothes grown to small. The way a pattern of hair appeared on his chest, his shoulders rising thicker and stronger out of his torso. His eyes grew darker, his jaw more defined, and his voice dropped deep into his stomach like music, like the voices of trees. Even his whispers sounded different to Bacchus after that. He had never seen a son of Adam become an adult before. As Edmund grew older he spent more and more time in the strange world of men carved into the Narnian woodland; politics, travel, meetings and exploration and war. Edmund began to have responsibilities in the tower of stone.

But still Bacchus found himself climbing that linden tree after sunset, or leaving a trail of leaves behind him from the front doors of Cair Paravel to Edmund's chambers, carrying an open bottle of wine, a fistful of violets and the marks of dryad lips on his stomach. There was a part of Edmund that never belonged in that stone prison, and Bacchus never failed to search for it.

Edmund's brother and his sisters looked askance, but who were they to complain. Lucy had her fondness for the cloven-footed and Susan couldn't stay clear of the naiads with their wet, transparent skin. Peter, that stalwart captain that he was, kept his fetishes to himself, but Bacchus had heard enough rumours to know that Edmund was perhaps the least wild of them all. Perhaps this is what attracted Bacchus to him, his staidness. His persistence. His jealousy and devotion. Edmund was beautiful and earnest and Bacchus couldn't seem to get to the end of that cup. There was always more he wanted from Edmund, and so he found himself leaving revels and heading for Edmund's bed, to rest his face against Edmund's chest and smell the wood smoke-clean scent of him. _Human._ So unique, so mortal.

A few nights before Edmund disappeared, they had found each other between the lantern waste and the river. Bacchus sat back against the trunk of an old willow tree and played on his pipe. Edmund looked tired then and Bacchus noted it. He was man, after all, and men do not live forever. He was not young the way he used to be, his energy was not boundless and all this running in the woods made him tired and sore. Perhaps it was a premonition, an intimation not of Edmund's mortality but of his foreignness, his imminent release back into the world of Man. He was melancholy for a moment, looking up at Edmund, seeing eventualities written in sweat on his forehead. He set his pipe aside and Edmund collapsed into his arms.

His immortal breath was part of his appeal, Bacchus knew that. When Edmund was with him, he became more than a mortal; he could dance for days with the right wine, with Bacchus' breath in his lungs. If he sang the right song, Edmund would not be sore or tired or sad, he would be filled with joy and peace. They would dance through the night again, as they often did. He stroked Edmund's back, he whispered into his ear.

"You," he said softly, like a lullaby, "you could tame me, if you wanted to." It was a sliver of truth he had not spoken aloud before; something his kin would not believe. He kissed Edmund and breathed youth back into him.

"I don't want to change you," Edmund whispered back. "I love you."

There was something devastating and ridiculous about the love of mortals. For people who die, they love so solemnly and completely, as if in their loving they could create something that wouldn't perish along with them. They were like miners, searching for gold to cast into their names, something that would remain after them. Edmund loved him so earnestly Bacchus imagined that he could feel the gold pour out of him, forming his initials on Bacchus's stomach: _E. P. Love Never Dies. _He found it sweet, he whispered those words back. _I'll love you forever _meant something quite different for Bacchus than it could for Edmund, but Bacchus said it anyway.

Edmund hadn't come to the revel that night, but Bacchus wasn't surprised. His sisters and his brother had invited him to go hunting the white stag. Bacchus knew he would be late at dinner at Cair Paravel, and would probably be too tired to hear Bacchus' pipe. He went alone and danced with centaurs, fed the fawns with kegs of cream and loaves of bread; a dance of plenty for those who would never know want.

But there was tension in the dancing that night, a tremour of something in the air, a misplaced note. He danced savagely, kissed the Maenads around him, and didn't think of Edmund. There would be time enough for the mortal man and his earnest love; there was no end of words Bacchus would whisper to him later when he found him asleep in his stone house. The naiads pulled Bacchus under the water to dance with him, blowing air into his lungs and playing with his hair. He was joyful.

Bacchus arrived at Edmund's chambers just before dawn, expecting to see him sleeping peacefully there. One arm thrown above his head, sheets twined around his legs, his smooth, bare skin so clean and pure, the mortal heat of him pulsing under Bacchus' fingers. He came with violets and wine, but Edmund's bed was empty.

By the next morning the news was sluicing over the country like a cold rain; the Kings and Queens had vanished.

Bacchus was not a man, he was not tame. He was only an immortal, and no great lion would come to him from over the sea to explain this to him. For weeks he combed through the forests, the valleys, the foothills. He climbed mountains and played his pipe, hoping that Edmund would hear him and come running. Bacchus would feed him, nurse him back to health, breathe life back into him. If he found Edmund dead Bacchus even knew how to resurrect him; he had the knife in his pocket, his blood was ready to serve. But he found no trace, no echo, no rumour. He sought out an old dryad, a seer; she had visions from time to time and Bacchus didn't know who else to ask.

"Yes, he is gone," she said. "He has returned to his people." Bacchus bowed his head. "He will return three times; the first time, he will be a child and will not remember you. The second time he will come into this world but will not set foot in Narnia. The third time he will come back and he will remember, and he will search for you. But the third time will come at the end of the world."

Bacchus had always known that one day the mortal man would die, that he would have to live on without Edmund. He had watched countless loved ones die before him, it was the way of their people and Bacchus found it a solemn moment. But Edmund, great King that he was; somehow Bacchus believed without ever thinking about it that Aslan would come to Edmund on his deathbed and make him young again, over and over, so that he would remain mortal but would live forever. He had not imagined that Edmund would vanish.

The old dryad saw his distress and offered to make him a draught. Willow bark and anemone, werewolf blood and flax. It would make him forget, purge him of his pain. He took the draught with him and went to Cair Paravel, wrapped himself in Edmund's sheets and stared at the bottle. His maenad friends found him there days later, the bottle shattered against the floor and a black puddle among the shards of glass. _One is not made immortal to forget, but to remember._

His whispers to Edmund, spurred on by those frantic _I love yous_, became promises he could not break. _I will love you forever_ is a difficult vow, but Bacchus fought to keep it. He danced, he drank wine and celebrated the joy of plenty, he kissed the maenads and dryads, he made love to the naiad women who dragged him underwater. But when he slept, he slept for weeks at a time and dreamed of mortal flesh, violets, and the feel of linden leaves in between his toes. He remained a child on the brink of adulthood, his face still smooth and his hair thick and glossy. Some evenings he curled himself between the roots of ancient trees and played his pipe, waiting for the sound of Edmund's footsteps in the distance.

He didn't count the years, because immortals don't. 


	3. Buried

*****

 In the dream his face is underwater, and he can see everything. The water is warm and sunlight is spiking through the surface. There are strange women floating past under him; they have green hair, pale skin, webbed fingers. They are talking and laughing, but he can't hear anything until the bubbles of air from their mouths reach his ears. Even then he can only catch a word or two before the bubbles burst and water fills his ears again. _Lost, tame, dance, love._ Words without context the women think are funny; they twirl around in the water and push lilies behind their ears.

On the lake bottom there's a man, a boy, really. He's lying naked among water vines and thick-stemmed flowers; there are fish swimming around him. His eyes are shut and his arms and legs shift with the water and the silvery bodies of the fish caress him. _Sad, betrayed, sleeping._ There are linden leaves in his hair. The women are still laughing, and when he looks toward the surface he can see his own hands under water. His fingers are covered with rings. Yellow and green. For a moment, just before he wakes, he believes that he is trapped in a wardrobe filled with water, and that he is dead.

*

Edmund Pevensie pulls up a shovelful of dirt and scatters it into the grass in front of his brother Peter. It is nearly six o'clock in the morning, and they are trespassing in the garden behind one particular row house in the East End.

"If anyone asks," Peter says, "we're checking on a broken water main."

Two weeks ago Peter had gone in search of coveralls and tools while Edmund looked up the address Professor Kirke gave them, searching city records to see who lives in the row house these days. It’s a young couple with two small children, the purchase of the property made three years prior. If they sneaked into the garden early enough no one would ever know they had been there. Everyone seemed pleased with this plan, but to Edmund it seems all wrong.

A young couple, professional; two children. Two children with imaginations and trowels, with sticky fingers and dirty fingernails that have certainly sunk into the earth in their own garden. What if they have found the rings already? What if they are adult monarchs in Narnia by now, sleeping in the bed that used to be his, drinking from those golden goblets and resurrecting the White Witch? What if they have turned into monsters and gathered up all the talking animals, the fauns, the centaurs and dryads, and shot them through their innocent heads with silver bullets? What if they have poured arsenic in the rivers and burnt the forests to the ground? Edmund doesn't trust them, no matter how sweet and lovely their school photographs are. They could be demons. They could be the harbingers of doom that makes the others so sure they are needed in Narnia again.

Children are never just children, not in this place. They could be living lies, as Edmund has been himself, just adults turned back on themselves and twisted inside out. Children could be just memoryless shells who had at one time been other people, in some other place. Edmund has nightmares about these children, blond and blue eyed, innocent in England but blood-drinking tyrants in Narnia. He dreams that they pull down Cair Paravel stone by stone and chop down the linden tree that grew outside his bedroom window there. In his nightmares he pleads for forgiveness from Lucy, from Aslan, from other, nameless creatures with wild hair and sad eyes. But he never receives it.

He has many nightmares these days.

Edmund had gotten up at four that morning as planned, blearily rolling out of bed in his London flat and trouping up to the East End with Peter in scavenged coveralls. They need to dig up twelve old rings; six yellow, six green. Professor Kirke buried them years ago around a Narnian tree he planted there, the tree that had turned into the old wardrobe, which sits in a place of honour in Professor Kirke's new house in Birmingham.

It was strange to see the wardrobe again. He remembers it more clearly than anything else; he remembers teasing Lucy, pressing his fists against the back of the thing, first while laughing and then later while crying. It had been tragic, leaving Narnia, but Edmund can't remember why anymore. Other than the fact that being a child was an inherently tragic thing, under the constant control of someone else. After a while he’d stopped noticing even that.

All that remains of the tree in the garden of the old row house is a flat stump razed so close to the ground they almost miss it. It was Aslan's will that Professor Kirke bury those old rings all those years ago; it was for the protection of humankind, or of Narnia, or both. It was for their own good, to keep them from grabbing at the rings and running away to Narnia whenever their hearts were broken. _For their own good._ No one else seems to think that maybe digging up the rings now is wrong.

They rake up the grass around the tree stump and Edmund pushes the shovel into the earth. He dumps piles of dirt in front of Peter, who sifts through it shovelful by shovelful with gloves on. Neither of them say anything. The first ring Peter finds is green, and he looks at it hard, holds it up into the air as if the pre-dawn light will reveal something on its surface, some mark of Narnia he might recognize. After a moment he tosses it into a box and keeps searching, not looking Edmund in the eye.

Once all the earth down to about a foot around the stump is in piles in front of Peter, Edmund pulls an old sieve out from his rucksack and sits down next to his brother, using a trowel and wishing his own gloves had holes in them. One yellow ring, two green ones. _Enough to take me home_, but Edmund doesn't say so. Peter would be disappointed in him, thinking only of himself. What about Aunt Polly, Uncle Digory? How about Eustace and Jill? For that moment, dropping the rings into the metal box and listening to the dull clink they make against each other, Edmund doesn't care about the rest of them. It takes every bit of strength he has, every memory of shame and betrayal, every bit of learned obedience and deference to his brother to keep him from pulling off his gloves and vanishing into thin air. He doesn't even really know how they work. Where would he appear? What if Narnia was in the middle of a war and he appeared in front of a metal-tipped arrow or a swinging sword? But what he fears the most is the wrath of the lion-god. Didn't Aslan say he couldn't return, in no uncertain terms? Wouldn't he be punished for trying anyway? Maybe the rings would take him right into the lap of the White Witch again, an appropriate punishment for his recidivism. He is the weak brother, the one who gave in, the one who's faith wasn't strong enough. Surely it will be him in the end who makes the wrong choice.

Edmund hasn't been thinking much about Narnia over the last few years. When he last returned from the place he had been thirteen, and the memories had drained from him faster than ever before. Three days after they had returned Lucy asked him where he thought Reepicheep had ended up, and Edmund didn't remember what a 'Reepicheep' was. After a year or two even Caspian's name sounded foreign, a bit of Persian geography rather than a flesh-and-blood person, a friend. It was only Lucy's stories, told vividly and often, that reminded him that anything had ever happened to them in a place called 'Narnia'. Truthfully he had almost laughed, when Professor Kirke called, thinking he had finally gone mad and mistook their childhood games for history.

"Something's not quite right," he’d said over the phone. "I think we're going to be needed in Narnia soon."

Needed? Why would they be needed in fantastical Narnia? Why would a place filled with miracles and talking animals need him, a decidedly average young man with a subpar transcript and few if any real prospects? He was a failure. A weak, pathetic, failure.

He had been packing up clothes and dishes in his flat when professor Kirke called. As the phone rang he dropped a crystal candy dish, one of the few things his grandmother had left him. He swore loudly before picking up the phone, and tried to hide his frustration. He listened to the old man go on about tugs from Narnia, strange feelings, fleeting memories, the sound of battles and voices, and started cleaning up the mess of glass. He cut himself on one of the shards of glass while making affirmative noises into the receiver. _Yes of course, I'll come up to Birmingham. Yes, we should all get together and talk about it._

It had been Lucy who had given professor Kirke Edmund's new telephone number, and Edmund could almost feel her stern look on him reminding him to believe, to accept, to play along. He could taste the turkish delight on his tongue, which for Edmund is the taste of guilt. He wrote down Professor Kirke's address and discussed trains, times and dates, all without revealing his unexplainable anger, his frustration, the pain from the long bloody cut down the length of his thumb. He was civil, he didn't let on.

"Lucy said I should call you here_," _the Professor said, as if to refocus those invisible eyes that pierced Edmund through. Edmund would go, he would do as he was told, he would go through the motions of belief and understanding, even if he remembered nothing at all. Even if he had to drink too much to account for his eyes glazing over during dinner, even if he had to lie.

“Of course,” Edmund said into the phone. “Yes, I'll make the arrangements. We'll see you in Birmingham.” When he was done, when the plans were made and the professor was satisfied, Edmund put down the phone and screamed like a lost animal, blood dripping down his arm.

What vague memories he had of Narnia had come back to him over dinner with the others in Professor Kirke's dining room. Caspian, Trumpkin, the sweet water at the edge of the world. A golden man in the bottom of a river, fairly glowing in the sunlight. Turkish delight in an silk-lined box, so attractive and forbidden; the sound of a stone cracking at dawn. Vague images of creatures whose names he didn't remember had flooded his brain while he broke a dinner roll and considered the silver scroll on the handle of the butter knife. It was enough to stoke the belief in his heart; he knew he had no choice but to accept it. He sighed, relieved. A bit of memory made him feel like less of a monster. He tried hard not to consider whether it was a true memory or just a memory of imagination, planted by his sister.

The others had seemed to remember more than he did, even Peter. Eustace told the whole story of his adventures, with Jill inserting details here and there. Conversations they’d had, obstacles they had overcome, riddles, the smell of powder dumped on a fire. What Edmund always remembered more than anything else was his own guilt, his betrayal. Even though it all sounded like a fairy tale to him, he couldn't believe anything the others said was false. He couldn't add betrayal to betrayal. He nodded along to whatever Lucy said, but understood why Susan didn't want to be there. Both believing it and the idea of not believing it made him feel like he was crazy.

Lucy had insisted that they leave a chair for Susan at the dinner table, but she hadn’t shown up.

By twenty past seven in the morning Edmund and Peter have all twelve rings in a metal box and Edmund shovels the earth back around the stump. It feels odd to Edmund to have them; rings that could take them back to Narnia when they are supposed to be no longer allowed to return. Imagine: a million questions answered, the gaps in Edmund's brain filled with something other than the smell of violets and grass. He prods the blank spaces in his memory as though they are a missing tooth, still hoping for something more solid than the vague taste of blood.

For a moment Edmund looks at the box in Peter's hands and considers grabbing it, running to the car and driving off. If he just disappears, really, who would miss him? What difference would it make?

Of course it would be Edmund who would dare to imagine disobeying Aslan's direct command, scrapping all of their carefully laid plans and running back into the arms of some childhood dream of his own importance. _Edmund the Betrayer_. Peter just snaps the box shut and tosses it into his rucksack_. _Like a fairy tale hero, like a perfect High King. Edmund is baffled and envious of Peter's supreme faith, his self-control. 

They hurry towards the car as quietly as possible, holding the rakes low so they won't scrape against the windows.

Edmund turns the key in the ignition just as a light appears in one of the upstairs bedrooms. They are safely out of the neighbourhood before anyone can notice them. Edmund keeps an eye on a tailgater behind him when Peter asks the inevitable question.

"Any word from Sandra?" Peter looks out the window as he asks, as though it is a casual question.

Of course he asks about it. It’s a distraction, something to talk about other than Narnia, other than Aslan and the old dented wardrobe in Professor Kirke's small house in Birmingham. _Edmund and his failures_, it’s up there with Susan and her horrible boyfriends and the overly-wet weather. Harmless topics. Harmless to everyone but Edmund, of course, who is still having nightmares.

He winces and hits the gas pedal a little too hard. "No, not since last week." Last week he answered the telephone and Sandra had been in tears. Still in tears, still livid. The sound of his voice made her collapse into a heap of sniffs and wet coughs. He hadn’t known what to say anymore, he’d put the phone down too quickly, pretended to be busy. She had wanted to know if he was _sure._

"Are you sure this is the right thing to do?" Peter looks at him.

Edmund swerves around a corner. "Define 'right'."

"Ed, if you call her and apologize, explain, I'm sure she'd-"

"Don't even start, Peter. I've heard this all from Lucy, you know." _Why does everyone want to give him advice about his love life?_ "Besides, there's nothing to explain. She wants to get married, I don't. End of story."

Peter drops his hands into his lap and sighs. There is a long silence while Edmund takes out his anger on the street in front of them and Peter stares blankly out the passenger-side window. "Better wire Professor Kirke about the rings," he says finally.

Edmund shakes his head. "I hope Eustace is ready for this. What if Professor Kirke is wrong? What if they don't want us?" He pulls into his parking space in front of his flat.

"He's not wrong, Ed. Don't you feel it? Aslan is calling us. When I'm sleeping it's all I can hear. And I see his eyes. Don't you? His eyes, looking at me like he's waiting for me to do this."

Edmund doesn't say anything. He too has been having strange dreams, dreams that make him certain that he’s made all the wrong choices. He woke up nearly a month ago from a dream he couldn't remember and had turned to see Sandra's hair on the pillow, her leg dangling off the side of the bed, and had known this wasn't right, he was in the wrong place altogether. He’d gotten out of bed and paced back and forth in the living room, stubbing his toe on the coffee table and sobbing into the cushions on the couch like the world was ending. Something was terribly wrong.

They’d had one of their fights one night and Edmund fell asleep on the couch rather than in bed. She pursed her lips and asked if he was cheating on her, and he tossed out a sour, "of course not." Her mother didn't like them living together, she wanted to see an engagement ring. Sandra had circled a reasonably priced one in a catalogue and left it on the table open to the right page. She dropped hints about her ring size and talked about her mother's visit in the spring. Edmund had felt he was too young for this, only twenty-one and still full of a million uncertainties, but it was expected and even Lucy had been dropping sly questions.

After that he had started to remember strange things. Glossy black hair under his fingers, skin browned from the sun and breath on his shoulder. Leaves everywhere, the smell of wine and sweat. _I'll love you forever, _who says that anymore? He had, he felt certain. He had said it to someone and he had meant it. He had chalked it up to romantic escapism or some program Sandra was watching on television. He glanced at the catalogue and his hands had started to shake; he had thought he was just scared to commit, it was some kind of masculine ennui. He had bought the ring but left it in his sock drawer.

He dreamed of a silhouette in his window, moonlight streaming in against the night, his chest constricting with something that made it hard to breathe. It was real desire, not the pale imitation of it. Otherworldly. He woke up feeling like his life was a lie and not once did he think about Narnia. When he realized the figure in his dreams was male, a wild creature full of youth and seduction, boyish and masculine and painfully, undeniably attractive to him, Edmund went to the bookstore and picked up a copy of _Leaves of Grass_, the only book he he could think of that was written by a homosexual_._ He was filled with confusion and shame, and every dream he had made it worse. This couldn't possibly be right. His family would disown him. Even Lucy would give up on him, a lost cause, a moral disaster.

_As if a phantom caress’d me, I thought I was not alone, walking here by the shore_. The dreams became clearer and clearer. Sandra had poked him awake a few times, shook him and pulled him into her arms because she had woken up to the sound of him crying.

"What is it?" She whispered. "What is it, love? What's wrong?" _But the one I thought was with me, as now I walk by the shore—the one I loved, that caress’d me, As I lean and look through the glimmering light—that one has utterly disappear’d. _He told her he'd had a nightmare, and he wasn't entirely lying. In the dream he passed through coats in Professor Kirke's wardrobe and realized that had taken a wrong turn and left something precious behind. A vow, a promise, an entire lifetime. He couldn't turn back, there was only solid wood behind him, a history of love half an inch beyond his reach. Glossy hair, violets, the sound of a pipe, the stain of wine on his stomach. Edmund felt something burning inside him and was afraid it would leave scars on his skin.

Later on he had admitted to Lucy that he had been having dreams, that he'd been remembering things, in a manner of speaking. She smiled.

"It's Aslan," she had said, happy. "He's reminding you why you love Narnia, why Narnia loves you. He's asking for your help."

It hadn’t felt at all like Aslan to Edmund, unless Aslan had wine-red lips like that, wine-red lips that tasted like fruit and rainwater. He had woken up feeling as though he were about to call someone's name, as if he were about to be called. He woke and felt certain that in the dream he knew everything, but he never remembered any of it. The dreams didn't coincide with any of the stories Lucy told him about Narnia; after dinner in Birmingham Edmund had gently asked her about a dark-haired boy who danced, but Lucy just shook her head and shrugged.

"We were in Narnia for so many years," she had said. "Sorry Ed, I don't know. Perhaps it's a friend of yours we didn't know." Lucy always had faith, even in strange dreams that made no sense. Edmund wasn't sure how to separate fantasy and memory; but then, he never had been certain there was a difference. He couldn't bear to tell her that he was in agony, that these memories were ripping his ideas about himself to shreds. She seemed to happy; why weren't her memories as difficult and painful as Edmund's?

At dinner in Birmingham with all the others there had been an apparition that changed everything. They had just finished dinner and Lucy had been about to get up to help with the tea when the Narnian man appeared in front of them. He seemed to be tied to a tree, he looked terrified. The Professor knocked his wine glass to the floor and Lucy and Jill screamed. Edmund had felt a rush of air on his face and suddenly remembered what it felt like to be standing by the water near Cair Paravel on a windy night; he remembered the strange trees and flowers that grew only the southern forests; the taste of roast boar with honey. He remembered hands on his back, sliding against his arms, and a desperate, painful feeling welling in his chest: _I'll love you forever. _ In that moment Narnia felt more real to him than anything else had ever been.

The apparition disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and it confirmed in everyone's minds that they needed to do something. _A message from Aslan, _they said, drinking tea and nodding to each other. Peter looked pale; Lucy was excited and nervous and couldn't stop talking. Eustace and Jill held hands under the table while Aunt Polly looked out the window, as if memorizing the stars.

Everything shattered in Edmund's mind after that, but he said nothing to the others. His memories felt even stranger than they had before; it wasn't just that he didn't remember, he only remembered certain things, as if someone had bored through his brain with a paring knife. He remembered the colour of the tablecloth at the high table at Cair Paravel, but not who sat to his right; he remembered dancing in the forest after dark but didn't remember who he was dancing with. Late at night as he fell asleep he remembered pulling someone into his arms feeling sun-warm skin under his lips, but didn't know who it could be. No names, no faces, no first kiss, first meeting, no memories of fighting, making up, making love. He had professed his undying love, he had promised himself _forever_ to someone, somewhere, and now he had betrayed that promise. It was in his nature to betray, it seemed; even without knowing it he was following the same path again and again.

He kissed Sandra one last time after that, on the lips, that morning as she fixed her hair. He was fond of her, he didn't want to hurt her, but this was no longer right. The idea of lying next to her made him think of turkish delight.

He had met her three years before, in music class. He played the trumpet, often too loud and too fast, and she played the flute. Once he had stayed behind the others and heard her playing a simple tune in low register. It had sounded familiar to Edmund, peaceful and beautiful. He’d watched her playing and liked the way her hair caught the light, the way she concentrated on the page in front of her. He’d asked her if she would have a drink with him and she had agreed to.

Sandra didn't know anything about Narnia. If Edmund had told her, she would have thought they were all crazy. She found the engagement ring in Edmund's sock drawer and was so happy she’d cried.

Peter sends the wire about the rings; he obscures it, as if some enemy of Aslan might intercept. TASK DONE STOP. Professor Kirke wires Peter and Edmund back later that night: WILL MEET YOU AT PAD STOP SAT TEN AM STOP. Peter and Edmund understand what will happen, the dance steps they must follow. They will send Eustace and Jill on to Narnia, the ones who are still welcome. The rest of them will all sit huddled on the living room floor and watch as the youngest ones touch the rings. Edmund will watch them quietly and feel jealous, wishing it was him going on to Narnia, wishing he hadn't squandered his time there eating bear meat and apples and complaining about the rain. There’s something else he should have done, something else he ought to have said. He can't remember what that is.

The train is scheduled to arrive at ten in the morning, and of course it is late. Edmund and Peter sit on the platform with their hands shoved into their pockets. The rings are still in the box, which still has dirt around the bottom of it. Peter hasn't touched it at all, there are still bits of grass on the sides of the rucksack. _Why, _Edmund thinks, _those rings scare him too. _This is reassuring to Edmund, that Peter too would be tempted, that he too has to struggle. Has Peter also been destroyed by memories of Narnia, silently suffering as Edmund does, even just a little? Peter hasn't said much about his own memories, after all. Mostly it's been Lucy, excited, prompting them and telling them stories. Maybe it's as painful and conflicted a process for Peter as it is for Edmund. Is this what happened to Susan? Has she turned her back on the rest of them because the nightmares don't make sense anymore, are too challenging, too painful?

Edmund glances at his watch and sighs. "Late again," he says. Peter nods and rubs his temples.

It isn't only the friends of Narnia they are expecting; it is their mother and father as well. They are concerned about Edmund, they want to know what happened with Sandra. They want to stop by on their way to Bristol. He had an argument with his mother over the telephone, and he’s still a little sore over it. Yes, he had broken up with Sandra, yes, it was his fault, no, he wasn't cheating on her. She tut-tutted and told him he was impossible; when she passed the telephone along his dad huffed and said, "But we liked her!" If they liked her so much, then _they_ could marry her, couldn't they. He didn't mention the dreams, or _Leaves of Grass. _

Against Peter's always sage advice, Edmund had driven over to Sandra's house to drop off the rest of her things. He thought it was the polite thing to do, but she only cried at the sight of him. He was uncomfortable, he didn't really know how he should feel. Sad? Heartbroken? He felt nothing, mostly. He was numb. He was tired though, and guilty.

He had asked for the engagement ring back. He got what he wanted, the ring thrown at him across the table in her favourite restaurant, the bed to himself again, the bathroom counter cleared of perfumes and creams and pink razors. He was relieved, but he knew he was supposed to feel something else. So he just walked back and forth from the car, passing boxes to Sandra's roommate, and avoided making eye contact. He mumbled an apology at the half-closed door and drove back his flat. It felt good to be alone again. There must be something wrong with him. Maybe he really was a monster. _Narnia has ruined me, _he thought, closing his eyes and hoping for and fearing another dream.

"We're coming down tomorrow morning," his mum had announced over the phone as Edmund pretended to have something burning on the stove. He had thought to protest, but there wasn't much he could do. They are coming, and on the same train they are already forced to meet. Edmund already envisions the conversation they will have over lunch and dreads it. He doesn't know what he’s going to say.

When the train approaches, it's coming too fast, it's leaning strangely to the right and looks as if it's poised to run right off the platform. The engine sounds wrong.

"Peter," Edmund says. He looks over and sees Peter's hand clutching the rucksack with the rings in it, his face pale.

"I can hear him," Peter whispers.

There is a great screeching, metal against metal, someone screaming on the platform, pressure against his chest. Edmund feels himself pushed off his feet and shoved against a wall; there is something hot and sticky against his throat. As he loses consciousness, he is sure he can almost hear a pipe in the distance, sounding like wood and leaves and wine casks; he longs more than anything to follow it.


End file.
